Assail (61 page)

When Jute gained the wall he found that it was coarse indeed, archaic even; the huge flat stones merely lay atop one another without shaping or chiselling. At least a wooden catwalk ran behind – a later addition, perhaps. Outside the wall, a deep ditch doubled its height to any attacker. A cold wind buffeted him. The chilled air descended off the Salt range visible above the rising forested foothills.

Beyond the ditch lay the sprawling encampment of the besieging outlanders – his countrymen included. The modest houses of Mantle town, mere shacks and huts, had long been occupied. Tents sprawled in an arc beyond, from cliff edge to cliff edge, in a broad semicircle. Multiple cook-fires sent up thin tendrils of smoke that were swiftly brushed to the south, out over the Sea of Gold. The besiegers sat about the fires, warming themselves, talking and joking. Snatches of laughter reached him, carried by the wind. Jute added up an estimate of just under three thousand. He turned round and studied those within – all of whom were armed – and came up with some five hundred. The usual ratio necessary to take a well-defended position is at least three to one. The attackers outnumbered such figures by far, yet so far they had failed to take the keep. That told him that these defenders were not the usual sort. The way each carried a spear or sword told him that they’d all lived their entire lives fighting already.

‘Who commands these rabble?’ Tyvar asked a northern woman who stood nearby, leaning on a spear.

The woman looked him up and down – Jute noted that she was almost as tall as Tyvar himself – and said, ‘I know not nor do I care.’ She pointedly turned away.

‘Perhaps I may be of assistance …’

Jute turned as he again recognized the accent that belonged in the imperial capital at Unta. It was indeed the wiry old woman from the king’s table. He offered her an Untan bow, which brought a smile to her thin pinched mouth, and she offered her hand, which he brushed with his lips.

‘Very gracious of you, Captain Jute Hernan of Falar,’ she said.

Tvyar imitated Jute’s gesture, though he invested it with far more grace. ‘I am honoured, Tyvar Gendarian,’ the woman, Malle, said, with obvious feeling. Then she turned to Cartheron.

‘Malle,’ Cartheron said. ‘Good to see you again. Been a while.’

She nodded. ‘Crust. Glad you made it.’

‘It weren’t easy, I tell you.’

Jute looked between the two. Well, well. Here’s a turn-up, as his wife would say.

‘Thank you for your help.’

‘So, can I go now?’ Cartheron asked.

‘Not yet.’

‘I was promised I’d be cut loose after this,’ the man growled in the closest note to anger Jute had heard from him.

‘You will,’ Malle assured him.

His answer was a dubious scowl. Malle turned to Tyvar. ‘The only leader out there is a retired Letherii military officer named Teal. However, new soldiers and veterans are arriving all the time.’

‘I thank you,’ he replied. ‘You are uncommonly well informed.’

Her smile turned thin, almost acerbic. ‘That is my business. Also, I have in my hire two ex-cadre mages who are pledged to the defence.’

Jute shot Cartheron a glance, the obvious inference being Lady Orosenn. The old Malazan commander shook his head.

Tyvar no doubt caught the look, as did Malle, probably. He peered about, then lowered his head. ‘We need not worry on that front,’ he assured her.

Malle raised an expressive brow. She glanced back to the bay. ‘The fourth ship? A mage?’

Tyvar nodded. ‘She has granted me permission to speak of her. However, she prefers to remain … anonymous.’

‘I see. Thank you, commander.’ She inclined her head fractionally. ‘If that is all, I can be found at the main table … where I busy myself listening to all of Ronal’s relatives’ offers to support them against him.’

Tyvar drew himself straight and bowed once more. ‘Affairs of statehood. I quite understand. Until later, madam.’

Jute quickly sketched a bow.

Cartheron merely raised his chin in a lazy see-you-later farewell. After she was gone, he turned to Jute. ‘About that lady there …’

‘Don’t get in her way – yes, I gathered that.’

Cartheron gave a very serious nod. ‘You’re a quick study.’ He turned to Tyvar and crossed his arms. ‘So … what do you think?’

‘I think that if these defenders can hold on, then this rabble will just wander off.’ He pulled at his beard thoughtfully. ‘That is, unless someone out there can give the besiegers some sort of spine.’

‘Riches – loot – is a great motivator,’ Cartheron supplied.

Jute frowned his confusion at that. ‘How do you know there are any riches here?’

Cartheron gave him a look that, back in the tent in Wrongway, he’d given one of his crew who’d asked a particularly stupid question. ‘That doesn’t matter,’ he said, as if explaining something to some new recruit. ‘What matters is what someone out there tells them.’

Jute felt his brows rising. ‘Ah. I see.’ Such a ploy as actually lying – deliberately or innocently – to one’s people hadn’t even occurred to him. However, if it got the job done … well, never mind, hey?

‘And you, Tyvar?’ Cartheron continued. ‘Is this your fight?’

The big man frowned at the question. ‘I do not know. Here is a battle. Yet … we’ve been forbidden from participating. I feel that this is not it. However, best remain hopeful, eh?’ And he slapped Cartheron on the back, almost toppling him from the wall.

For his part, Jute did not like being the object of so many hostile and evaluative eyes as he stood there exposed upon the defences. ‘Perhaps we should retire?’ he offered. Cartheron and Tyvar agreed, and they descended the beaten dirt rampart.

They crossed to the cliffs, and, in despair, Jute realized he’d have to descend the damned stairs in order to return to the
Dawn
. Only that could possibly have convinced him to set foot once more on the rickety construction. He managed it, but he had his eyes closed for most of the descent.

Back on board, he immediately went to Ieleen. ‘Well,’ he began, ‘they’re under siege. But they don’t want our help.’

Her hands resting on her walking stick, she nodded her understanding. ‘They’re proud. This is their land. They don’t want us here.’

‘However,’ Jute added, ‘Tyvar pledged our support … and our vessels.’

She tilted her head in thought. ‘Perhaps in case evacuation is necessary.’

Jute rubbed his chin; he hadn’t thought of that. Where in the world would they take them? ‘No. I don’t think so. But good point.’

‘So we wait.’

‘Yes.’ He cleared his throat. ‘And, dearest … about this woman, Giana …’

‘Yes?’

‘Now, you know there’s nothing there – really, there isn’t.’

His wife gave a low throaty chuckle and shook her head. ‘Oh, I know that’s so.’

For some reason Jute felt rather piqued. ‘Why would that be so?’

‘Because she has eyes for our master-at-arms.’

Now he was confused. ‘But she’s …’

His wife was nodding. ‘Yes, dearest. She most certainly is.’

* * *

Badlands quickly shook off any help from Fisher. He led the bard and Jethiss north, and he did so in utter silence, without a glance to either of them. For his part, Fisher eased into the role of returning to the land of his youth. He’d grown up on the Myrni Holding, just to the east. They had taken in his mother, who was of the ancient Fanyar Hold, long pushed out of her homeland. As such, a half-blood, he came to find that he was welcome in neither world. And so he had renounced his place among the Myrni, swearing never to return, and went to find his way in the world.

Yet return he had, from time to time. The last being some three decades ago – in the wider world he’d found that those of Iceblood descent lived a far greater allotment of years.

Each time he returned he’d encountered the same festering blood-feuds and vendettas, the same blind hatreds and stupid bigotries, and each time he’d vowed never to return again.

Yet here he was once more. For the last time, he suspected, as he had seen this same tragic story of invasion and obliteration play out before in many lands. Any subsistence society, even one that is small-scale horticultural, cannot possibly compete against the invasion of a full-scale agricultural society. The inequity in numbers is simply too great. The locals find themselves swamped every time. If not in one generation, then in two or three. Such has been the story for every region of human migration and settlement. Even regions that boast of themselves as ‘pure’ or ‘native’ stand upon the bones of forgotten predecessors.

But he was a bard – he could not forget, nor would he.

Now the same inexorable story had finally reached his homeland. Long though the region might have withstood this historical process, it had finally arrived on its shores. And here he would witness the playing out of its final chapter – and upon his own people, as the fates would have it.

Poetic, that. Something for him, as a bard, to relish.

Walking the pine and birch forest, he reflected that the singing of this song would wring his heart.

Badlands led them onward through rough untrammelled forest and up steep valleys to a slope so high that snow still lingered in the shadows behind boulders and fallen logs. Here they found the Lost Greathall.

It was raining that afternoon; a cold downpour from clouds so low one might name them fog. Wild woods surrounded the hall. Any fields that might have once been cultivated around it had long since fallen back to the woods’ encroachment. One ancient white spruce, as fat about as his arm-span, grew next to its moss-covered log walls. Its roof was a tangle of live growing brush and grasses. Its front entrance gaped open. Rainwater pooled on beaten bare earth.

Badlands tramped onward up the huge length of the hall. Birds flew overhead to perch on murky rafters. A long table stood across the far rear wall. Embers glowed within a massive stone hearth and this flickering orange light a single occupant sat at the table’s centre, a conical helmet next to him, a bowl before him.

Badlands halted and ducked his head. ‘Stalker,’ he murmured.

Stalker Lost pushed himself back from the table, brushed his long hanging moustache, and eyed his brother with a gaze that seemed to glow brighter than the embers. ‘How’d it happen?’ he grated.

Badlands flinched beneath the harsh glare. ‘Arrow fire.’

Stalker simply shook his head. ‘Damned fool.’

Fisher stepped forward. ‘He saved the people in Antler Fort.’

The Lost’s narrowed hazel gaze shifted. ‘This doesn’t involve you, Fisher.’

‘It involves all of us, I fear.’

Stalker grunted at that, picked up his wooden spoon, and ate another mouthful. ‘Yeah, well. You got a point there.’ He raised his voice, shouting, ‘Ain’t that so, Cal?’

Badlands, Fisher and Jethiss turned. Figures had entered the hall behind them. Two men and a woman. The lead figure was very dark, of Dal Hon extraction, Fisher recognized. Older, his kinked hair greying, in leather armour stained a deep blood red; the rainwater that dripped from him appeared almost as dark as blood itself. The other two wore banded armour, with shields at their backs, longswords at their sides. The tattered remains of a red cloth tabard hung from the woman and upon it Fisher could just make out an undulating line of silver.

His breath eased from him in a long exhalation of wonder and he turned to Stalker. ‘These are Crimson Guard.’

Stalker nodded, eyeing his brother. ‘Yeah. Funny that, hey? We was joined up for a time with the Guard. Then I come home and who do I find out in the woods? Cal’s troop here. All hands raised against ’em. Fighting everyone on all sides. So I offer them a place so long as they pledge to defend the Holding. And there you are.’ He raised a hand to Badlands. ‘We got us hearthguards.’

Fisher turned to the one he assumed to be Cal. ‘Why did you remain, then? You could’ve made the coast.’

The wiry old Dal Hon looked him up and down. ‘That’s our business.’

Stalker chuckled while he ate. ‘Same old answer. Cal here claims the Guard has a stake here in this region. Though what he means by that I got no idea. Still …’ He brushed his moustache again. ‘We do keep running into each other, don’t we? It’s like fate, maybe, hey?’ And he laughed.

He motioned for Fisher to sit. ‘Welcome. And you are?’

Fisher almost jumped – so quiet had his companion been, he’d almost forgotten his presence.

‘Jethiss,’ the Andii said.

Stalker nodded, his gaze lazy. ‘Can’t say as we’ve ever had an Andii visit these parts. What brings you here?’

‘As you said. Fate.’

Stalker snorted a laugh. He spooned up a last portion from the bowl. ‘Guess I asked for that. Anyway, sit, everyone. Eat. We have boiled mountain goat. I recommend it as it’s all there is.’

Badlands scooped up a bowlful and sat heavily to lean hunched over the table. Fisher spooned out a portion and offered it to Jethiss, who shook his head. He sat with it instead. The Crimson Guard bowed and exited – as hearthguards they could not sit with the Icebloods and their guests in the Greathall. They would eat later at the hirelings’ table.